Sustainability Considerations for UAM in the Smart City

This paper discusses the sustainability of Urban Air Mobility (UAM) in smart cities across four dimensions: environmental, social, economic, and operational impacts. In the long term, UAM aircraft are expected to be autonomous and unmanned, however, there some UAM aircraft will have pilots in the immediate future. Economic factors reflect the financial viability of UAM, the business case for operations, public impacts from subsidies for vertiport and power infrastructure, and potential indirect costs from increased electricity demand and grid upgrades. Environmental impacts include energy use, emissions, and noise. Social considerations include vertiport siting, public acceptance, employment effects, land use changes, and distributional equity. Operational sustainability encompasses technical readiness, regulatory conditions, and UAM missions such as cargo delivery, passenger transport and emergency response. Using existing literature and case studies from U.S. cities to provide a summary of relevant topics, we analyze a UAM business case framework and estimate travel time savings for airport-to-downtown trips in Dallas and New York. We compare UAM energy intensity and emissions versus conventional transportation modes using a New York City application, and examine how vertiport siting impacts travel times, land use, and neighborhood noise. Operational considerations highlight early use cases most likely to deliver near-term benefits. We conclude with a research agenda to address gaps and guide sustainable UAM deployment.